"Crash Bashed Down To Earth When Someone Stole His Mini-Games"

Crash Bash is the party game that tries to be a jack-of-all-trades, pitting up to 4 players in a mini game galore fest that is “ensured” to provide laughs and endless entertainment. Well, that’s what I read anyway, and for the first part of the game, I really did agree. Crash gives you a host of mini games, that as a single player mode, you can unlock. The more you win, beat a time or beat everyone from a disadvantage from, the better stuff you get, and the more trophies you collect to battle a boss, win, and unlock another set of games. As you begin, you choose from 8 well-known crash characters and begin the games. The games fall into a few categories. There’s the goalie games on dodgems which is actually the board game Hungary Hippo’s, or if you remember way back when, the fantastic game Piggy Punks, with Crash in. Then there are the “mark the squares your colour” games and the obligatory racing game, which is shocking only round a minute circle shape. Also onboard are a “push the others off the iceberg” game, a rip off of Bomberman but in tanks, a burst the balloons game and two others. All of these games have power ups which nicely and unfairly up the ante and make sure that the games keep to about a minute each at the most. All the games are at least mildly addictive, while the Hungry Hippo rip-off is arguably the best of the lot and extremely addictive. Once you complete the first level and beat the boss you eagerly run around to the next level only to find that is exactly the same games all over again!!! Each level only provides a small twist on the last, such as the iceberg melting in iceberg games and the floor falling away once 2 boxes are smashed on it in the box smashing games. Admittedly, some of these are great things, but you can’t help but think you’ve just paid out an awful lot of money for a very empty mini games pack. You get over 80 games in Bishi Bashi Special (ok, many are similar, but at least they aren’t al played in the same area). It’s a dreadful shame as if a couple more games were thrown in; it would have been so much easier to forgive this oversight in playability. None-the-less, come the time when your friends come round to play, its still a great game to play, and you can always gang up on the one person and have purely unfair bouts, but what could have been an absolute stonker of a game (board game mode anyone?) have been bashed into mediocrity by lack of game development.